P2F is only in some parts of europe an issue, in others it is still normal that typeratings are paid for, however a bond has to be expected, in my company it is 12 months for a typerating on an airbus or boeing.
Abinitio trained pilots however are pretty much the norm in major airlines for the past 60 years or so, the industry is quite different from the US. Training your own cadets has some very distinct advantages, for one you can do very thorough testing of your applicants before anyone has to spend a ton of money on training and assure beforehand that passing through the training as well as fitting into the majority of your flightdeck crew is pretty much assured. And of course throughout the training you can further check on progress vs. expectations and weed out the final few that slipped through the assessment center in the end guaranteeing high quality entry pilots. For the applicant that passes through the entry tests it is pretty much a guaranteed job and some help with the training cost if not even training for free. The military is doing actually pretty much the same for their pilots.